He gave us this eternal spring 'He hangs in shades the orange bright, 'Oh! let our voice his praise exalt, Thus sang they in the English boat, A holy and a cheerful note; And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time." 1700. George Berkeley was born in Ireland in 1684, and died in 1753. In 1733, he was promoted to the bishoprick of Cloyne, which he illustrated by his talents, his virtues and his liberality. "To Berkeley every virtue under heaven," is a line of Pope, which was true to the letter. He had long cher ished a scheme for the conversion of the North American Indians, for which he published "A Proposal" in 1725. Among many excellent remarks is the following:-" It is but just that these poor creatures should receive some advantage with respect to their spiritual interests, from those who have so much improved their temporal, by settling among them;" and he thus concludes-" A benefaction of this kind seems to enlarge the very being of a man, extending it to distant places and to future times; inasmuch as unseen countries and after-ages may feel the effects of his bounty, while he himself reaps the reward in the society of those who, having turned many to righteousness, shine as the stars for ever and ever.'" The poetical piece, which bears upon the subject of our Article, and which is the only thing in verse we have from his pen, is on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America. Having been uttered now nearly a century and a half ago, it may rank in the list of prophecies, while it is one of the most beautiful compositions in the English language. "ON THE PROSPECT OF PLANTING ARTS AND LEARNING IN AMERICA. The muse, disgusted at an age and clime Barren of every glorious theme, In distant lands now waits a better time, In happy climes, where from the genial sun In happy climes, the seat of innocence, Where men shall not impose, for truth and sense, There shall be sung another golden age, Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Westward the course of empire takes its way- A fifth shall close the drama with the day, ODE, WRITTEN FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON, April 30, 1839. By William Cullen Bryant. Great were the hearts, and strong the minds And ever hallowed be the hour, When, as the auspicious task was done, That noble race is gone; the suns Of fifty years have risen and set; 1 Wide-as our own free race increase— Wide shall extend the elastic chain, And hold in everlasting peace, State after state, a mighty train. THE SECOND WAR OF THE REVOLUTION. BY A VIRGINIAN. When the people of the United States resolved to put an end to the corporation which, rising upon the ruins of the old continental currency, amidst the wants and distresses of the revolution, early displayed its native instinctive hostility to justice, equality, and the liberties of the people; and which, after a few years of interregnum and anarchy-while the people, burthened with the debts they had incurred as the price of their liberty, were torn by rival factions, and distracted by the petty jealousies of thirteen sovereign States—was ingrafted into their new government before they had learnt its strength and resources, distinctly marked its limitations, or tested its capacity for good or evil; and which again, after a few years' suspension of its existence, reviving, like a phœnix, from the ashes of national calamity, clothed with renewed strength, and endowed with mightier privileges, was forced upon their necks, under the pretence of expediency and necessity, in the midst of war and national calamity. When they resolved to destroy an institution so created in violation of the Constitution, and after long experience and repeated trials of its dangerous tendencies, it was not the mere paper charter-the parchment roll filed away among the records of legislation—which they wished to have annihilated; nor was it the types and machinery by which paper is manufactured into money which were the objects of their hostility; none of these things could call forth those deep feelings of opposition and repugnance which the people have manifested for more than half a century, and which, growing stronger and stronger by every day's experience, have at length become fixed in a solemn resolution to risk every consideration in the unflinching resolution to confine all money corporations to their legitimate sphere of promoting commercial utility alone.* *Minutes of the Assembly, March 21, 1785. Petitions from a considerable number of the inhabitants of Chester county were read, representing that the bank at Philadelphia had fatal effects upon the community: that whilst men are enabled, by means of the bank, to receive near three times the rate of common interest, and at the same time receive their money at very short warning, whenever they have occasion for it, it will be impossible for the husbandman or mechanic to borrow on the former terms of legal interest and distant payments of the principal; that the best security will not enable the person to borrow; that experience clearly demonstrates the mischievous consequences of this institution to the fair trader; that impostors have been enabled to support themselves in a fictitious credit, by means of a temporary punctuality at the bank, until they have drawn in their honest neighbors to trust them with their property, or to pledge their credit as sureties, and have been finally involved in ruin and distress; that they have repeatedly seen the stopping of discounts at the bank operate on the trading part of the community with a degree of violence scarcely inferior to that of a stagnation of blood in the human body, hurrying the wretched merchant who hath debts to pay into the hands of griping usurers; that the directors of the bank may give such preference in trade, by advances of money to their particular parties, as to destroy that equality which ought to prevail in a commercial country; that paper money has often proved beneficial to the State, but the bank forbids it, and the people must acquiesce; therefore, and in order to restore public confidence and private security, they pray that a bill may be brought in and passed into a law, for repealing the law for incorporating the bank. March 28. The report of the committee, read March 25th, on the petitions from the counties of Chester and Berks, and the city of Philadelphia and its vicinity, praying the act of the Assembly whereby the bank was established at Philadelphia may be repealed, was read the second ime, as follows, viz: To suppose that a reflecting, self-governing people can be influenced by personal hostilities or partialities in such a contest-to imagine that the sympathies of a mighty nation can be roused and put forth by any visible, outward object, seen and known by one only in ten thousand, is utterly to mistake the true character of mankind, and the secret sources of popular omnipotence. It is only as a sign, a symbol of some invisible power, that any external object can exert a controlling influence over the public mind. Who regards with more than idle curiosity the painted bunting hung out to allure the multitude to some race-field or juggler's show? But convert the idle streamer into the banner of a nation-symbolling and presenting mysteriously, as it were, to the bodily eye, the sanctity of law, the blessings of peace, the consolations of religion, and the endearments of home-and it at once exerts a thrilling power over the heart of every human being who owns a country. When all Paris rolled forth like a flood, and wave after wave beat against the sides of the Bastile until it fell, can any one be so ignorant of the secret springs of human action as to imagine that it was the granite walls, or the few miserable wretches immured within their dungeons, that shot such maniac fury through the heart of a phrenzied multitude, and endowed them with the instinct, the guidance, and the resistless force, of an omnipotent being. It was a consciousness deeper than thought, that there, in those dark, antique turrets, The committee to whom was referred the petitions concerning the bank established in Philadelphia, and who were instructed to inquire whether the said bank be compatible with the public safety and that equality which ought ever to prevail between the individuals of a republic, beg leave to report: That it is the opinion of this committee that the said bank, as at present established, is incompatible with the public safety; that, in the present state of our trade, the said bank has a direct tendency to banish a great part of the specie from the country, so as to produce a scarcity of money, and to collect into the hands of the stockholders of the said bank almost the whole of the money which remains among us; that the accumulations of enormous wealth in the hands of a society who claim perpetual duration will, necessarily, produce a degree of influence and power which cannot be entrusted in the hands of any set of men whatsoever, without endangering the public safety; that the said bank, in its corporate capacity, is empowered to hold estates to the amount of ten millions of dollars, and, by the tenor of the present charter, is to exist for ever, without being obliged to yield any emolument to the Government, or to be at all dependent upon it; that the great profits of the bank which will daily increase as money grows scarce, and which already far exceed the profits of European banks, have tempted foreigners to vest their money in this bank, and thus to draw from us large sums for interest. That foreigners will doubtless be more and more induced to become stockholders, until the time may arrive when this enormous engine of power may become subject to foreign influence; this country may be agitated with the politics of European courts, and the good people of America be reduced once more into a state of subordination and dependence upon some one or other of the European powers. That, at best, if it were even confined to the hands of Americans, it would be totally destructive of that equality which ought to prevail in a republic. We have nothing in our free and equal Government capable of balancing the influence which this bank must create, and we see nothing which, in the course of a few years, can prevent the directors of the bank from governing Pennsylvania. Already we have felt its influence indirectly interfering in the measures of Legislature. Already the House of Assembly, the representatives of the people, have been threatened that the credit of our paper currency will be blasted by the bank; and if this growing evil continues, we fear the time is not very distant when the bank will be able to dictate to the Legislature what laws to pass and what to forbear. Your committee, therefore, beg leave further to report the following resolution to be adopted by the house, viz: Resolved, That a committee be appointed to bring in a bill to repeal the act of Assembly passed the first day of April, 1782, entitled "An act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of North America," and also to repeal one other act of Assembly passed the 18th of March, 1782, entitled "An act for preventing and punishing the counterfeiting of the common seal, bank bills, and bank notes of the president, directors, and company of the Bank of North America. and for other purposes therein mentioned." were embodied the tyranny, oppression, and despotism which, growing up age after age, and piling tower upon tower, was then frowning in sad wrath from its lofty battlements, upon an enslaved, down-trodden people, and scowling defiance in their pallid, hunger-bitten faces, every hour of their toilsome and degraded existence. It was this consciousness, deep-stirring in their bosoms, that set the long-sleeping masses in motion, and sent them welling and billowing against that which was a more complete emblem of tyranny than the poor imbecile Louis, who bore the name of Majesty. In like manner, it was not the parchment of privileges, the impenetrable walls of a marble palace, or the old De Launay, royal superintendent, and his Swiss guards who dwelt therein, that roused the indignation of the people against our American bastile. It was a mightier cause of action-a secret, all-pervading, overshadowing influence, corrupting their agents and sapping their liberties; of which sweeping, overwhelming power that institution was the sign, the symbol, the thinking-head and controlling will. The Constitution, after a perilous time of disorder and national prostration, was adopted by the people of the States for their common defence and general welfare; and the Government organized under it had been in operation now some forty years, but was perverted in the beginning from its legitimate purposes. That class of men who would live by their wits on the labor of others; who would be clothed with purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day at the expense of the toil and sweat of the poor man's brow; who practise the principles of Cataline, alieni avidus sui profusus-the system of Diddler in the farce, "living any way and well, at any body's expense;" who hung like a dark cloud of croaking, ill-boding ravens on the skirts of our suffering, bleeding armies, defrauding the soldiers, succoring the enemy, and in the hour of triumph, soulless wretches as they were, crying beef! beef! while a patriot camp was wringing with the shouts of victory and independence; ever clamorous for office, scrambling for the merest crumbs of patronage; that class of men, the perennial growth of every clime and every age, seized on the Government in the beginning of its operations, and endeavored to convert it into a machine for funding, banking, and speculating, not only in the national domain, in Indian wars, treaties, annuities, and Indian lands; but such was their cormorant appetite, that not even the claims of the poor invalid and pensioner, the claims of the toil-worn soldier, which he asked in exchange for his youth, health, fortune, and blood, spent in defence of his country, could escape their rapacious hands. While robbing the poor, and plundering the nation, ever fruitful in expedients, skilful in devices, growing bold with success, and audacious in impunity, they at length assumed omnipotent powers for a government which the people had ordained for limited and specified purposes, and commenced a system of unequal and unjust taxation, beneficial to themselves, but burthensome to the people-a system of taxation, not for revenue, not for the legitimate wants of a Government economically administered, but avowedly for the purpose of fostering and protecting the interests of a few sections and classes of men at the expense of the entire nation. The vast funds, thus accumulated beyond the just wants of Government, were wielded as a kind of magic wand, to sway and influence the opinions of the people, corrupt their principles, change their love of liberty into a thirst for gain, and to bribe them into submission and a right loyal allegiance, by appealing to their hopes, and exciting the expectation that they would obtain a portion of those rich spoils, the fruits of their prostitution and abandonment of principle; but which were at length, by selfish and fraudulent combinations, expended on some road, or canal, or river, or creek, or harbour, not for the common defence and general welfare, but for the immediate and only benefit of those concerned in the speculation. This stupendous system of partial legislation, of fraud and peculation, was checked by the Executive veto on the bill providing for the Maysville road; but it still survives, and, Proteus-like, lives in a thousand shapes, costing the nation, to this day, an annual expenditure of some ten or twelve millions. In tracing the history of our national legislation, it will be observed that the limitations of the Constitution, and the common good of the whole Union, have been rarely considered |